Journal of Criminal Law and CriminologyVolume 83Issue 2 Summer Article 3

Summer 1992

Institutional Perspective on PolicingJohn P. Crank

Robert Langworthy

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Recommended CitationJohn P. Crank, Robert Langworthy, Institutional Perspective on Policing, 83 J. Crim. L. & Criminology 338 (1992-1993)

0091-4169/92/8302-0338THE JOURNAL OF CRIMINAL LAW & CRIMINOLOGY Vol. 83, No. 2Copyright 0 1992 by Northwestern University, School of Law Printed in USA.

AN INSTITUTIONAL PERSPECTIVEOF POLICING

JOHN P. CRANK* AND ROBERT LANGWORTHY**

ABSTRACT

This article suggests that American municipal police departmentsare highly institutionalized organizations and should be studied interms of how their formal structure and activities are shaped by power-ful myths in their institutional environment. The incorporation ofpowerful myths into the structure and activities of police departmentsenables them to attain legitimacy; with legitimacy comes stability andprotection from outside interference by powerful sovereign actors whoare present in the enveloping institutional environment. However, le-gitimacy problems arising from conflicting institutional myths mayprecipitate full-blown organizational crises. Such police departmentcrises are resolved ceremonially through a ritual that combines thepublic degradation of the department and the removal and replace-ment of the disgraced police chief by a new chief with a "legitimating"mandate.

I. INTRODUCTION

A. OVERVIEW

This article is about the institutional environment of Americanmunicipal police departments and the way in which that environ-ment influences the departments' organization and activity. This in-stitutional orientation differs from the normative focus of traditionaltheories of police department organization. This normative focushas concentrated on rational considerations of efficiency and effec-tiveness of police departments' organizational structures, policiesand operational strategies as gauged by technical outputs, such asthe production of arrests.'

In contrast, the institutional perspective presented here focuseson powerful myths produced by broad processes in a police depart-

* Department of Criminal Justice, University of Nevada, Las Vegas.** Department of Criminal Justice, University of Cincinnati.

1 See LARRY K. GAINES ET AL., POLICE ADMINISTRATION (1991); ORLANDO W. WILSON

& Roy C. MCLAREN, POLICE ADMINISTRATION (4th ed. 1977).

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ment's institutional environment and looks at the influence thesemyths have on the formal structure and activities of particular orga-nizational elements within the department. By successfully incorpo-rating institutional myths into its formal structures and activities,other relevant actors in its institutional environment perceive that apolice department is legitimate. 2 A fundamental interest in survivalleads police departments to "accede to the demands of other ac-tors" on whom departments depend for legitimacy, and with the re-ceipt of legitimacy, the continued flow of resources fororganizational survival.3 However, at times, entities confront con-flicting myths in their institutional environments. 4 Utilizing the per-spective of Meyer and Scott, this article suggests that a municipalpolice department develops "treaties between contending legitima-tions" when it encounters conflicting myths in its institutional envi-ronment.5 Even with such treaties, conflicts may intensify into acrisis in which a department loses its legitimacy within its institu-tional environment. Consonant with the institutional perspective,such a legitimacy crisis is resolved ceremonially through a ritual,which combines the public degradation of the department and theremoval and replacement of the disgraced chief of police by a newchief with a "legitimating" mandate.

B. RELATION TO OTHER APPROACHES

Literature on the organizational structure of municipal policedepartments has traditionally been normative, advocating particulartypes of structures to achieve organizational goals.6 According tothis literature, particular types of structures and operational strate-gies enhance the efficiency and/or effectiveness of the police depart-ment's pursuit of desired goals. Reform-minded policymakers haveendeavored to identify organizational structures that facilitate theproduction of outputs consistent with particular departmentalgoals. 7 Organizationally-based reform efforts, however, seldom

2 See John W. Meyer & Brian Rowan, Institutionalized Organizations: Formal Structure asMyth and Ceremony, 83 AM.J. Soc. 340, 348 (1977).

3 Paul DiMaggio, Interest and Agency in Institutional Theory, in INSTITUTIONAL PATrERNSAND ORGANIZATIONS: CULTURE AND ENVIRONMENT 3, 8 (Lynne G. Zucker ed., 1988).

4 See John W. Meyer & W. Richard Scott, Centralization and the Legitimacy Problems ofLocal Government, in ORGANIZATIONAL ENVIRONMENTS: RITUAL AND RATIONALITY 199 (JohnW. Meyer & W. Richard Scott eds., 1983).

5 Id. at 210.6 See Robert H. Langworthy, Organizational Structure, in WHAT WORKS IN POLICING 87

(G. Cordner & D. Hale eds., 1992); ROBERT H. LANGWORTHY, THE STRUCTURE OF POLICEORGANIZATIONS (1986).

7 Id. at 89-92. For an example of a text that links organizational structure and pro-ductive function, see WILSON & McLAREN, supra note 1.

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have achieved the desired goals, leading to declarations that "re-form had come to a standstill,"8 frustration over the intransigenceof the police to change9 and calls for the critical re-evaluation of"normative theories" linking organizational structures to desiredoutputs. 10

The disappointments with the results of police organizationalreform has prompted inquiries into the constraining influence ofcharacteristics of a police organization's environment on attempts tochange its structure and activities." This article complements andextends that progression of environmental analysis by consideringthe influence that characteristics of a police department's institu-tional environment have on organizational structure and activity.The institutional focus of this article reveals the influence of resur-gent interest in the relationship between the institutional character-istics of an organization's environment and its structures andactivities.12 One result of that renewed interest is an appreciation ofthe pronounced degree to which the organization and activity of a

8 ROBERT M. FOGELSON, BIG-CITY POLICE 295 (1977).

9 See Gary W. Sykes, The Functional Nature of Police Reform: The "Myth " of Controlling thePolice, in CRITICAL ISSUES IN POLICING 286 (Roger G. Dunham & Geoffrey P. Alpert eds.,1989); Dorothy Guyot, Bending Granite: Attempts to Change the Rank Structure of AmericanPolice Departments, in POLICE ADMINISTRATIVE ISSUES: TECHNIQUES AND FUNCTIONS 43(Mark R. Pogrebin & Robert M. Regoli eds., 1986).

10 See Robert H. Langworthy, Wilson's Theory of Police Behavior: A Replication of the Con-

straint Theory, 2 JUST. Q. 89 (1985).11 See, e.g., Dorothy Guyot, supra note 9. The research that has provided insights into

ways that various environments affect police organizational structures and activities isrepresented by the following. Langworthy and Crank examined linkages between policeorganizational structures and environmental factors. LANGWORTHY, supra note 6, at 97-125; John P. Crank, The Influence of Environmental and Organizational Factors on Police Style inUrban and Rural Environments, 27 J. RES. IN CRIME & DELINQUENCY 166 (1990). Slovakand Swanson employed multivariate models to assess the impact of environmental fac-tors on variation in police style. JEFFREY S. SLOVAR, STYLES OF URBAN POLICING: ORGANI-ZATION, ENVIRONMENT AND POLICE STYLES IN SELECTED AMERICAN CITIES (1986); CherylSwanson, The Influence of Organization and Environment on Arrest Policies in Major U.S. Cities, 7POL'Y STUD.J. 399 (1978). Kowalewski et al. and Meagher assessed the implications of arural location on police operations. David Kowalewski et al., Police Environments and Oper-ational Codes: A Case Study of Rural Setting, 12 J. POLICE ScI. & ADMIN. 363 (1984); M.Steven Meagher, Police Patrol Styles: How Pervasive is Community Variation?, 13J. POLICE SCI.& ADMIN. 36 (1985).

12 For a discussion of the recent interest in institutional theory, see THE NEW INSTITO-TIONALISM IN ORGANIZATIONAL ANALYSIS 1-40 (Walter Powell & Paul J. DiMaggio eds.,1991). See also INSTITUTIONAL PATTERNS AND ORGANIZATIONS: CULTURE AND ENVIRONMENT(Lynne G. Zucker ed., 1988); R. Richard Ritti & Jonathan H. Silver, Early Processes ofInstitutionalization: The Dramaturgy of Exchange in Interorganizational Relationships, 31 ADMIN.SCI. Q. 25 (1986); W. Richard Scott, Systems Within Systems: The Mental Health Sector, 28AM. BEHAVIORAL SCIENTIST 601 (1985); Paul DiMaggio & Walter W. Powell, The Iron CageRevisited: Institutional Isomorphism and Collective Rationality in Organizational Fields, 48 AM.Soc. REV. 147 (1983).

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public sector agency is influenced by the institutional features of itsenvironment.' 3 Even though police departments are quintessentialpublic sector agencies, efforts to assess them using an institutionalperspective are almost nonexistent.' 4 Consequently, this articlerepresents a preliminary attempt to delineate conceptually the insti-tutional environment of policing and to identify some important ele-ments in that environment.15

II. MUNICIPAL POLICE ENVIRONMENTS

The central view of this article is that the organization and prac-tice of municipal police work occurs in an environment saturatedwith institutional values. As a result of this environmental context,police practices and organizational structures cannot be understoodeither simply in terms of production economies or solely from theperspective of technical efficiency and effectiveness. A police or-ganization does not create a product which is "exchanged in a mar-ket such that organizations are rewarded for effective and efficientcontrol of the work process."' 6 Consequently, assessments of po-lice activity that employ efficiency and effectiveness criteria have lim-ited utility in the understanding of the structure and activities of apolice department.

13 See Frank R. Dobbins et al., The Expansion of Due Process in Organizations, in INSTITU-TIONAL PATTERNS AND ORGANIZATIONS: CULTURE AND ENVIRONMENT 71 (Lynne G. Zuckered., 1988); EDWARD SHILS, CENTER AND PERIPHERY: ESSAYS IN MACROSOCIOLOGY (1975).

14 Two recent exceptions to the general absence of institutional analysis are notewor-thy. Crank et al. presented an analysis of local and centrist sovereignty in the institu-tional environment of police organizations. John P. Crank et al., Sovereigns in theInstitutional Environment of Police Organizations, Paper Presented at the Annual Meeting ofthe Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences (1990). Mastrofski et al. assessed the relativeefficacy of three models of organizational structure-the rational model, the constrainedrational model and the loosely coupled model-for explaining DUI arrests. Stephen D.Mastrofski et al., Organizational Determinants of Police Discretion: The Case of Drinking - Driv-ing, 15J. CRIM.JUST. 387 (1987).

The present article draws from the same theoretical tradition as these works andsimilarly attempts to broaden the conceptualization of a police department as a partici-pant in an institutional environment.

15 Though not presented explicitly as institutional theory, the writings of Peter Man-ning anticipate much of the conceptual development of police organizations presentedhere. See PETER K. MANNING, POLICE WORK ch. 4 (1977). Manning argues, for example,that police use particular technologies and tactics symbolically to provide a particular or,in our words, ceremonial image of police organization and activity to the public. SeePeter K. Manning, The Police: Mandate, Strategies, and Appearances, in POLICING: A VIEWFROM THE STREET 7-31 (Peter K. Manning &John Van Maanen eds., 1978). As Manningnotes, "The police have developed and utilized [such] strategies ... for the purpose ofcreating... the appearance of managing their troublesome mandate." Id. at 23.

16 W. Richard Scott &John W. Meyer, The Organization of Societal Sectors, in ORGANIZA-

TIONAL ENVIRONMENTS: RITUAL AND RATIONALITY 129, 140 (John W. Meyer & W. RichardScott eds., 1983).

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Instead, a police department participates with other powerfulactors, called sovereigns, in an institutional environment, and it re-ceives legitimacy from these sovereigns.1 7 Sovereigns are other ac-tors whose views are significant, that is, they are entities that havethe capacity to affect the fundamental well-being of a police organi-zation. When the department conforms to institutional expectationsof what the appropriate structures and activities for a police depart-ment are, a police department is recognized by those sovereignswithin its institutional environment as a legitimate or true policeagency. In other words, it looks like a police agency should look,and it acts like a police agency should act. Consequently, to securethe continued well-being of the department, the organizationalforms and practices of police departments tend to conform tobroad, institutionally accepted norms. 18 Thus, the elaboration ofpolice organizational structure and the selection of particular goals,operational strategies and departmental policies represent the de-partment's efforts to establish and maintain organizational legiti-macy; and via that legitimacy, the police department insures thecontinued flow of resources needed for long-term well-being andsurvival. 19 Simply put, a police department's organizational struc-ture, policies and operational strategies have a great deal to do withinstitutional values in its environment and very little to do with pro-duction economies or technical capabilities.

Diverse aspects of policing reveal the extent to which the orga-nizational structure and activities of a police department are affectedby its institutional environment. The following are some examplesthat highlight the influence of the institutional environment on po-lice appearance, specialized law enforcement units and two commonpolice practices.

EXAMPLE 1: POLICE APPEARANCE

To be recognized as police by the community, police depart-ment personnel must conform to broad, institutionally derived ex-pectations about the appropriate appearance of police. Amongthose expectations are appropriate titles, uniforms, badges and in-

17 Meyer & Scott, supra note 4, at 201-02. Sovereigns are agents of authority that

are capable of influencing department policy, withholding information or disrupting theflow of resources via such means as litigation, municipal funding or research support forprogram development; they also may mobilize public sentiment or embarrassing mediaexposure. Id. Examples of sovereigns in the institutional environment of police organi-zations include the city council, mayor, police unions, empowered minority groups, thecourts and the voting public.

18 DiMaggio, supra note 3, at 9.19 See Meyer & Rowan, supra note 2, at 352.

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signia indicating rank, department and assignment, all of which cer-emonially verify that a police officer is a police officer. Failure toconform to institutional expectations of appropriate police appear-ance may result in a loss of "legitimacy." That is, the public orother powerful actors in the institutional environment may simplyrefuse to accept the police as police.

For example, in 1970, the Lakewood (Colorado) Police Depart-ment entitled itself the "Lakewood Department of Public Safety,"adopted non-traditional rank designations (e.g., field advisor for ser-geant, and senior field advisor for lieutenant) and wore blazers foruniform dress. By 1973, however, the department had abandonedthese changes and reverted to a "police" title and traditional ranks,insignia and dress. The use of a "public safety" title and non-tradi-tional ranks, insignia and dress had generated both confusion andembarrassment in contacts with other agencies and with the pub-lic.20 Moreover, other police agencies with which the Lakewood Po-lice Department had ongoing contact stopped sharing informationwith them. Lakewood lost its legitimacy in the eyes of the publicand other police agencies.

This example illustrates that a "police" title and traditionalranks, insignia and uniforms are important symbols that provide le-gitimacy in the institutional environment of a police department.Abandoning these symbols ultimately may subvert a department'slegitimacy with particular sovereigns, such as the general public andother police agencies. In this case, Lakewood restored legitimacyafter hiring a new police chief with a mandate to return the depart-ment to traditional modes of police dress.2'

EXAMPLE 2: SPECIALIZED LAW ENFORCEMENT UNITS

The following example suggests that the elaboration of organi-zational structure is determined by institutional expectations ofwhat the police should do, rather than practical considerations ofwhat they actually do. Law enforcement is perceived as a highly le-gitimate police activity by the public and its elected representa-tives.22 Consequently, police budgets tend to be justified in termsof the need for greater levels of law enforcement, and police depart-ments tend to become functionally complex in the number and spe-cialization of its crime-fighting units.23 But, this organizational

20 Guyot, supra note 9, at 58.21 Id22 Manning, supra note 15, at 13.23 Id.

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complexity is ceremonial: instead of evolving because additionalspecialization actually improves efficiency and effectiveness, theelaborate structure has developed in response to what a departmentshould look like to sovereigns in its institutional environment (pri-marily the public and its elected representatives). It is thus commonto find urban police departments with specialized crime units suchas burglary, DUI, auto theft, fraud, gangs, assault, homicide, rob-bery, juveniles, vice and narcotics. 24

The specialization itself is perceived by the sovereigns as essen-tial to the "war against crime." That is, because of the influence ofthese sovereigns, organizational structure has elaborated in the di-rection of specialized crime-fighting units. Yet such specialization isinconsistent with the tasks actually undertaken by police depart-ments. Research on the variety of activities performed by police hasshown that only a relatively small proportion of police work actuallyinvolves true law enforcement; the bulk of customary police worktypically involves such activities as community service, crime preven-tion and maintenance of order. 25 The elaborate organizationalstructure emphasizes law enforcement activities, reinforcing the po-lice department's institutional image as a "crime fighter," in spite ofinconsistencies between that image and the actual work of thedepartment.26

EXAMPLE 3: PREVENTIVE PATROL AND RAPID RESPONSE SYSTEMS

Finally, technical rules that are initially introduced for reasonsof effectiveness may themselves become institutionalized. 27 Two re-lated technical procedures that have become institutionalized aremotorized random preventive patrol and rapid response systems(based on automatically routing 911 emergency telephone calls).Motorized random preventive patrol was introduced in the 1920s asa crime prevention strategy. 28 Subsequent adoption of this crime-fighting strategy among police organizations, however, suggests thatits diffusion across the American municipal landscape is more con-sistent with processes of institutional diffusion than with depart-ment-by-department evaluations of its effectiveness in lawenforcement or crime prevention. 29 Today, this strategy is widely

24 See, for example, the organizational chart for the Kansas City Police Department inSAMUEL WALKER, THE POLICE IN AMERICA 80-81 (1st ed. 1983).

25 Id. at 18, 19; ALBERTJ. REISS, JR., THE POLICE AND THE PUBLIC 70-71 (1972).26 Manning, supra note 15, at 30.27 Meyer & Rowan, supra note 2, at 344.28 SAMUEL WALKER, A CRITICAL HISTORY OF POLICE REFORM 136 (1977).29 See Pamela S. Tolbert & Lynne G. Zucker, Institutional Sources of Change in the Formal

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used in spite of an increasing body of evidence that shows randompreventive patrol is not effective in preventing crimes or producingarrests.30 In other words, the use of random preventive patrol dis-plays to the institutional audience, and particularly to sovereigns,that a particular police department behaves like police organizationsshould behave in this specific technical area; conformity with the ex-pected institutional norm is more important than whether the spe-cific practice itself actually contributes to better policing.

As a complement to motorized preventive patrol, rapid re-sponse (911) systems have been promoted as a means for quick re-sponse to emergency calls from the public.3 1 However, as withrandom preventive patrol, there is scant evidence that 911 systemsare effective in either crime prevention or law enforcement. 32 Fur-thermore, since a 911 system coupled with motorized preventive pa-trol absorb a substantial portion of a police department's limitedmanpower and budget resources, they impair a department's abilityto try alternative patrol or crime-prevention strategies.33 Yet de-spite that impairment and the doubts about their effectiveness, theuse of 911 systems in conjunction with random preventive patrolcontinues to be widespread. 34

Why do these two procedures, designed for purposes of techni-cal effectiveness, persist with such vigor despite their apparent fail-ure to improve actual policing? Because they have extraordinarylegitimacy with the public. As Skolnick and Bayley note, "People ex-pect a patrol car to come whenever they need police help. Theycomplain bitterly when it doesn't arrive instantaneously."3 5 Inother words, rapid response systems have become an important rit-ual of contemporary policing; they ceremonially demonstrate the le-gitimacy of the public's reliance on the police. Failure to providerapid response to calls for assistance may bring the department

Structure of Organizations: The Diffusion of Civil Service Reform, 1880-1935, 28 ADMIN. SCI. Q.22, for a discussion of the process of the institutional diffusion of due process in theUnited States.

30 See Kelling et al., for a report of the first systematic evaluation of random preven-tive patrol. GEORGE KELLING ET AL., THE KANSAS CITY PREVENTIVE PATROL EXPERIMENT:A TECHNICAL REPORT 142, 271 (Police Foundation 1974). It concluded that random pre-ventive patrol had no significant impact on crime, citizen perception of police service orcitizen fear of victimization. Id.

31 SAMUEL WALKER, THE POLICE IN AMERICA: AN INTRODUCTION 92 (2d ed. 1992).32 SeeJEROME H. SKOLNICK & DAVID H. BAYLEY, THE NEW BLUE LINE: POLICE INNOVA-

TION IN SIX AMERICAN CITIES 5 (1986).33 HERMAN GOLDSTEIN, PROBLEM-ORIENTED POLICING 20 (1990).34 Walker notes that approximately 80% of big-city police departments use 911 sys-

tems. WALKER, THE POLICE IN AMERICA supra note 31, at 92.35 SKOLNICK & BAYLEY, supra note 32, at 28.

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under the scrutiny of important sovereigns such as the press, mayoror city council. These sovereigns may raise the specter that the po-lice are not fulfilling their mandate to protect the public; ultimatelythey may envelop the police department in a full-blown legitimationcrisis. Thus, even though the rituals of 911 systems and randompreventive patrol may be neither effective nor efficient as law en-forcement or crime prevention strategies, they provide ceremonialevidence that a police department behaves as it should. The cere-monial evidence consists of visibly displaying patrol cars on thestreets and using elaborate charts and measures for tracking re-sponse time to citizen calls for assistance. Failure to sustain theseimportant rituals may result in the de-legitimation of a policedepartment.

These examples highlight some of the diverse ways in which apolice department is affected by its institutional environment. Theremainder of the article is an initial attempt to construct an institu-tional theory of police organizations. A fuller institutional theory ofpolicing will develop only over time through the process of scholarlydebate and discussion. We hope that the following preliminaryideas will help promote that process.

III. TOWARD AN INSTITUTIONAL THEORY

OF POLICE ORGANIZATIONS

A. INSTITUTIONALISM

The idea of an institutionalized organization, in the broadestsense, means that "organizational forms and behaviors take theform that they do because of prevailing values and beliefs that havebecome institutionalized.- 36 Institutionalized organizations, be-cause they embody prevailing values and beliefs, cease to be "mereengines" of bureaucratic efficiency; they are recognized as valuednatural communities, whose "self-maintenance becomes an end initself." 37

This article borrows extensively from Meyer and Rowan's dis-cussion of institutionalized organizations to describe the institu-

36 RICHARD H. HALL, ORGANIZATIONS: STRUCTURE, PROCESS, AND OUTCOMES 313 (4thed. 1987).

37 PHILIP SELZNICK, LEADERSHIP IN ADMINISTRATION 17 (1957). The idea of a valued,natural community is suggested by the police recruitment process. Among recruits, po-licing is not simply a vocation; recruits believe in the contribution that policing makes tosociety and that policing is an avocation. New recruits are made to believe that they areparticipating in an important endeavor and that they are joining an elite and specialoccupation. John Van Maanen, Observations on the Making of Policemen, in THE AMBIVALENTFORCE 93-94 (Abraham Blumberg & Elaine Niederhoffer eds., 3d ed. 1985).

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tional environment of policing and its influence on the organizationand operation of a police department.38 Meyer and Rowan maintainthat institutionalized organizations are constructed of "widespreadunderstandings of social reality,"39 which they called myths. Here,"myth" means that these understandings of social reality are per-ceived to be more important than any particular individual or organ-ization and have an intrinsic quality of "truth" or "rightness" aboutthem. The dress code of the police, police budgets, random motor-ized patrol and rapid response discussed above each represent pow-erful institutional myths in that they are typically seen as so integralto policing that their truth is beyond question. Such myths are in-corporated into the organization as particular structures or opera-tional strategies that are carried out by members of the organizationin a "dramaturgy of exchange" to "gain acceptance from major par-ticipants in the inter-organizational environment. ' 40 These ritualactivities of significance ceremonially demonstrate to other institu-tional participants that the police organization looks like or acts like apolice department and thus deserves continued support qua a policedepartment. In the following sections, we discuss the evolution ofinstitutional myths that bear on police departments and the relation-ship between these myths and elements of police organizationalstructure and activity.

B. MYTH AND MYTH-BUILDING IN THE INSTITUTIONAL ENVIRONMENT

Three broad historically based processes may be described asinstitutional myth-builders. 41 These processes, adapted for theanalysis of police organizations, are here called (1) official legiti-macy, (2) elaboration of relational networks and (3) organizational-institutional reactivity. These historical processes reveal the influ-ence of organizations and powerful individuals as agents in the con-struction of institutional myths. 42 Discussions and examples of eachof these are presented below, with the caveat that the processes de-scribed here are ideal types. Thoughtful consideration of the exam-ples presented below suggests that these processes, thoughanalytically distinct, tend to overlap in particular situations.

38 See Meyer & Rowan, supra note 2.

39 Id. at 343.40 Ritti & Silver, supra note 12, at 26.41 Meyer & Rowan, supra note 2, at 347.42 Id. This perspective differs from classic formulations of institutional theory in

which institutions were perceived to be independent of human agency. Contemporaryinstitutional theory has recognized the importance of powerful actors in the institution-alization process. For a discussion of the issue of agency, see DiMaggio, supra note 3.

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1. Official Legitimacy

A powerful source of institutional myths are those that are inci-dent to official legitimacy. As Meyer and Rowan note, judicial au-thorities may create legal mandates, administrative agencies mayestablish rules of practice, and occupations may require licenses orrules.43 This type of myth represents a coercive aspect of legiti-macy. Environmental sovereigns may literally force legitimacy on aparticular organization when it has not provided a satisfactory legiti-mating account of itself.44 Many aspects of police activity and orga-nizational structure are linked to institutional myths that derivefrom this process. The following are several examples in which po-lice organizations are forced to accede to officially accepted prac-tices in order to retain legitimacy.

Example 1: Civil Service. A potent institutional myth that carriesthe weight of official legitimacy is civil service. Here, the institu-tional myth is that civil service is the appropriate organizationalform for police personnel systems. Introduced during the reform-ist era in the late 1800s, civil service statutes provided police depart-ments with written standards for hiring, promotion and review ofpolice personnel.45 Research has suggested that civil serviceemerged as a powerful institutional form in its own right, diffusingwidely across the municipal landscape independent of its early re-form base.46 The wide diffusion of civil service may have occurredso thoroughly because it was an integral component of the institu-tionalization of the rational bureaucratic form of organization inmunicipal government.47 Civil service has subsequently become ahighly institutionalized form for defining the relations among policepersonnel. Today, the use of civil service personnel systems in po-lice departments is so entrenched and institutionally universal thatefforts to change police personnel policies have been compared to"bending granite."'48

43 Meyer & Rowan, supra note 2, at 347.44 DiMaggio & Powell, supra note 12, at 150-52.45 WALKER, supra note 28.46 For a discussion of the process of institutional diffusion, see Dobbins et al., supra

note 13.Tolbert and Zucker suggest that the adoption of civil service reforms was effected at

the outset by changing city demographics and local political culture. Tolbert & Zucker,supra note 29, at 22-24. However, later patterns of reform were unrelated to these char-acteristics. They concluded that the dissemination of civil service across the Americanmunicipal landscape occurred because of "institutional definitions of the legitimatestructural form for municipal administration." DiMaggio & Powell, supra note 12, at149.

47 Meyer & Rowan, supra note 2, at 345.48 Guyot, supra note 9.

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Example 2: Due Process. A second example is the power of legalmandate that resulted from the Supreme Court decisions handeddown by the Warren Court in the 1960s. This period produced amyth that, in encounters between the police and the public, ceremo-nial rituals demonstrating police observance of due process actuallyproducejustice. Decisions such as Miranda v. Arizona49 have empha-sized the individual's constitutional protections as a legal elementwhich police must formally incorporate into arrest activity. The cer-emonial invocation of these protections in police arrest and interro-gation demonstrates to the courts that the police are legitimatelyacting as they should. This ceremony may involve the ritual presen-tation of symbolic totems of the state's power, such as two-by-threeinch embossed plastic cards with Miranda rights printed in bothEnglish and Spanish, which are given to suspects at the time of anarrest. Another example of this ceremony occurs when state policeagencies invoke the ritual of signature by having a Hispanic suspectsign a document, printed in English on one side and Spanish on theother, indicating that a suspect has agreed to a vehicular search forcontraband following a routine traffic stop.

Example 3: Credentialing. A final example concerns legitimacy de-rived from credentialing police officers. The myth is that only indi-viduals who have completed formal training are indeed "police."That is, as a result of the formal credentialing process, credentialedofficers are recognized by sovereigns as legitimate police represent-atives. Likewise, officers who do not receive credentialed training,often described as part-time or auxiliary police officers, lack legiti-macy and are not considered "real police." The following illustratesthe implications of this credentialing process for organizational le-gitimacy. In statewide hearings 5° sponsored by the Illinois State Po-lice Training Board in 1988, the Secretary of the Southern IllinoisFraternal Order of the Police openly and aggressively attacked thepractice of using less expensive, part-time police who had not re-ceived state-licensed training. Many small police departments hadadopted this practice. The Secretary's challenge centered on thepart-time officers' lack of credentialed training and raised the spec-ter of devastating litigation if non-credentialed officers were in-volved in a police shooting or civil rights violation. In other words,

49 Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436 (1966).50 Statewide hearings were held by the Illinois Local Government Law Enforcement

Officers Training Board in 1988 to provide a public forum for the discussion of mini-mum pre-service training standards for part-time police. These hearings were held inRockford (March 24), Collinsville (March 29), Springfield (March 31) and Rosemont(April 7).

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police officers who have not been ceremonially credentialed as po-lice may lack legitimacy with the courts, and their behavior may sub-sequently provide the basis for devastating litigation against thepolice department and the municipality.

Such litigation has occurred. In 1984, Walter DeBow was se-verely beaten by another inmate in the East St. Louis jail.51 He sub-sequently filed a negligence suit against the city and the policedepartment, charging that the jail was not staffed with properlytrained police. He was awarded $3.4 million, and the city defaultedon paying the judgment. He subsequently sued East St. Louis forcity property, and in September 1990, he was "awarded the deed toone of East St. Louis's finest buildings, the four-year old municipalbuilding." 52 This example also reveals the coercive power of officiallegitimacy. Failure of the police to properly credential their officersmay have a devastating impact, not only on the police department,but also on its primary benefactor and powerful sovereign, the citymunicipal government.

2. Elaboration of Relational Networks

Another process by which institutional myths evolve is throughthe elaboration of relational networks. The elaboration of relationalnetworks refers to the process by which increases in connectednessbetween spheres of activity in a particular institutional environmentresult in new organizational elaboration in the form of structures,procedures or policies.55 Connectedness refers to formal and infor-mal linkages or "transactions tying organizations to one another." 54

This is similar to the concept of environmental turbulence, whichdescribes the level of causal interconnection within the environ-ment. 55 According to this idea, the intersection of previously un-connected spheres of activity, or increases in levels of activitybetween connected spheres of activity, results in new organizationalforms and beliefs, defining the relations between the spheres of ac-tivity. As relations endure and solidify, the emergent forms and be-liefs can achieve mythical status, ceremonially reaffirming therelationship between those spheres. The following examples sug-gest this process.

Example 1: Organized Labor and Police Reform. The connectednessbetween police departments and organized labor bodies has con-

51 City Hall No Longer City's, N.Y. TIMES, Sept. 29, 1990, at 8.52 Id.53 DiMaggio & Powell, supra note 12, at 148.54 Id.55 HALL, supra note 36.

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tributed to the formalization of police personnel policies and con-tract negotiation procedures. It also has contributed to thecontemporary myth that line-level police work is and should behighly discretionary. The intersection of police and organized la-bor, though initially occurring in the early 1900s, gained momen-tum in the years after World War II. During that era, the expansionof union and non-union labor representation in police departmentsincreased the influence of line officers on departmental affairs.Also, the expansion of organized labor activity into the sphere ofpolice activity was associated with a fundamental shift in police re-form. 56 The shift focused away from reform, in terms of organiza-tional restructuring (for purposes of control of line officerbehavior), and toward the opposite-reform in terms of the provi-sion of line officer autonomy or discretion.57 Today, the idea thatdiscretion is inherent in the police role and, moreover, should be apart of the police role58 is becoming institutionalized in part be-cause of the elaboration of police relational networks to include la-bor representation. This example suggests that both organizationalstructure and line-level role characteristics have been affected by theintersection of the spheres of activity of unions and policeorganizations.

Example 2: Value of Innovation. This example describes an elabo-ration of the law-enforcement network that produced a myth whichseemingly contradicts ideas of institutionalization. The establish-ment of relations between three broad institutional sectors has cre-ated the myth that innovative experimentation can be done and isgood. The emergence of this myth derives from the intersection ofthe police, higher education and the federal government sectors; itwas initiated by the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act of1968.59

The Omnibus Crime Contral and Safe Streets Act was passed in1968 in response to national concern over increasing crime. TheOmnibus Act provided a mechanism, the Law Enforcement Assist-ance Administration (LEAA), for the disbursement of grant moniesfrom the federal sector to state planning agencies, which then dis-

56 FOGELSON, supra note 8, at 193-218.57 JEROME SKOLNICK, JUSTICE WITHOUT TRIAL, 235-36 (2d ed. 1975).58 See Gary W. Sykes, Street Justice: A Moral Defense of Order-Maintenance Policing, 3 JUST.

Q 497 (1986) and James Q. Wilson & George L. Kelling, Police and Neighborhood Safety:Broken Windows, ATLANTIC MONTHLY, March 1982, at 29 for discussions of discretion,order-maintenance activities and community protection. In brief, both of these perspec-tives argue that line-level discretion in arrest decisions is necessary for the protection ofcommunities against criminal invasion.

59 42 U.S.C. § 3758 (1968).

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tribute grant monies to regional planning units, often comprised oflocal police agency personnel.60

The LEAA purposively opposed categorical grant applications;instead, it insisted that the redistribution of federal grants be linkedto program innovation. As Feely and Sarat noted, "The [Omnibus]Safe Streets Act required the federal government to demand inno-vation in criminal justice policy and state and local governments torespond to those demands.... The message of the act was simple-money would be given, innovation produced." 61

Innovative programs, such as team policing, decentralized or-ganizational structures, directed patrol and mini-stations, enabledpolice departments to secure otherwise scarce resources during theearly and mid-1970s when many municipalities faced significant fis-cal hardships. Thus, the idea of innovation emerged as a potentcontemporary myth in the institutional environment of policing.The adoption of such innovative programs into police organiza-tional structure and activity provided ceremonial evidence that po-lice departments were responding to their problems appropriately,because innovation had become legitimate in the eyes of a powerfulbenefactor, the federal government. This example suggests thatmany innovative police organizational structures (e.g., research anddevelopment units, police teams, mini-stations), strategies (e.g.,crime prevention through community mobilization) and operations(e.g., directed patrol) emerged in part in response to the powerfulcontemporary myth of innovation.

Research skills needed to implement and evaluate these innova-tive programs were sought among university academicians, whoprovided the stamp of scientific objectivity to police research andrelated organizational innovation. In this way, a complex networkof relationships linking the police, higher education and the federalgovernment has led to the institutionalization of an important con-temporary myth-innovation is good for police and can contributeto the police department's ability to solve both criminal and socialproblems.

3. Organizational-Institutional Reactivity

The third source of institutional myth derives from the way inwhich police leadership is involved in the myth-building process.

60 MALCOLM M. FEELY & AUSTIN D. SARAT, THE POLICY DILEMMA: FEDERAL CRIME

POLICY AND THE LAW ENFORCEMENT ASSISTANCE ADMINISTRATION, 1968-1978, at 46-47(1980).

61 Id. at 45-60.

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According to this notion, powerful police departments, police pro-fessional associations and executive police leadership are activelyengaged in constructing and shaping of myths in their institutionalenvironment. 62 The following examples suggest ways in which po-lice departments and organizations and their leaders have them-selves been involved in institutional myth-building.

Example 1: Professional Organizations. The International Associa-tion of Chiefs of Police, together with the more recent emergence ofother professional organizations involving police personnel, such asthe International Association of Police Planners, the Academy ofCriminal Justice Sciences 63 and the Police Executive Research Fo-rum, have provided the police profession with occupationally-basedfora actively engaged in shaping its institutional environment.These organizations have not simply provided fora for the exchangeof ideas but have also provided a mechanism-professional associa-tions-for the anointing of particular technical procedures as ortho-doxy. These powerful professional associations thus becomeagents of institutionalization. 64

Example 2: Influential Leadership. An example of how a powerfulpolice executive can contribute to the institutionalization of particu-lar police practices is that of August Vollmer and his efforts to insti-tutionalize the Uniform Crime Reports. August Vollmer, widelyrecognized as the patriarch of police professionalism, has had abroad impact on police activities nationally and was instrumental inestablishing many police practices that have subsequently achievedmythical stature. Vollmer's broad influence is revealed in the estab-lishment of the Uniform Crime Reports (UCR).65 Vollmer initiallyproposed the UCR as a method to track crime in the United States.Today, the ritual of data collection for the UCR is accomplished bytens of thousands of reporting districts across the country, all ofwhich use similar offense classifications for the labeling of reportedand cleared crime. Thus, a particular technique for measuringcrime has become institutionalized as a means of assessing whethera police department acts (i.e., making arrests) as a police organiza-tion is supposed to act. In spite of a great deal of contemporaryevidence that the Uniform Crime Reports tell us very little aboutactual crime, attention to UCR data collection provides a police or-ganization with ceremonial evidence that the organization is doing

62 Meyer & Rowan, supra note 2, at 348.63 The Academy is a professional organization representing both practitioners and

academicians.64 DiMaggio & Powell, supra note 12, at 152-53.65 WALKER, supra note 28, at 155-56.

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something about crime.66

August Vollmer's influence among the police also reveals howexecutive leadership can contribute to the institutionalization oftechnical procedures. Vollmer advocated applying technology topolice work.67 He expounded on the importance of scientific tech-nologies for crime control, introduced the first scientific crime con-trol laboratory in the United States in 1916 and the first lie detectormachine for use in criminal investigation in 1921. 6 8

Vollmer's reform advocacy gained a national audience, and hisconception of scientific crime control diffused and became institu-tionalized. Today scientific crime control applications encompasssuch diverse areas as fingerprinting, DNA testing, weaponry, sophis-ticated communications systems, widespread use of mobile trafficunits and computerization, including computer links inside patrolcars.

Example 3: Crime-Fighting Image. Next is an example of howmyth-building by police leadership can affect organizational struc-ture. Though there was movement at the turn of the century to clar-ify the role of police in terms of law enforcement, 69 the 1930s wasthe era in which the police role came to be seen in terms of lawenforcement. 70 Police leadership that encouraged the crime-fight-ing orientation included O.W. Wilson and J. Edgar Hoover. 71 Thischange toward crime prevention has been described as an institu-tional-level change. 72 That this image was developed to serve theneeds of the police has been noted: Manning has argued that thecrime-fighter image was constructed by the police to gain the publicconfidence, and Klockars has referred to the image of the crime-fighting "professional" as a circumlocution. 73 Nevertheless, the risein reported serious crime from the 1930s to the early 1980s magni-fied in the public mind the importance of law-enforcement activityand further reinforced the public perception of the primary role of

66 MANNING, supra note 15, at 130-32.67 Gene Edward Carte, August Vollmer and the Origin of Police Professionalism, in POLICE

ADMIN. ISSUEs 3 (Mark R. Pogrebin & Robert M. Regoli eds., 1986).68 Id. at 6.69 WALKER, supra note 28, at 47.70 Id. at 139-66.71 Id. at 139.72 As Walker notes, "The Federal Bureau of Investigation suddenly emerged as a

major factor in policing. Accompanying this institutional change was an even moreprofound intellectual reorientation: the 1930s marked the flowering of the crime-fight-ing role-image of the police." Id. at 151.

73 MANNING, supra note 15, at 15-16; Carl B. Klockars, The Rhetoric of Community Polic-ing, in THINKING ABOUT POLICE 534-35 (Carl B. Klockars & Stephen D. Mastrofski eds.,2d ed. 1991).

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police as law enforcement. Thus, since the turn of the century, thestructures of police departments have been organized aroundcrime-fighting activity, even though, as noted previously, only asmall proportion of police activity, including the activity of patrolofficers in urban areas with high crime rates, directly involves crime-fighting. Today, efforts by police administrators to acquire in-creased budgets are invariably justified on the basis of a perceivedneed to improve crime-fighting capabilities. 74 This example sug-gests that police organizational structure is enabled by institutional-ized expectations (which are influenced by important police actors)that the principal activity of the police is law enforcement.

IV. LEGITIMACY CRISES

A. LEGITIMACY CHALLENGED

The preceding described three broad processes of institutionalmyth-building and provided examples of how myths are incorpo-rated into elements of police organizational structure and activity.From an institutional perspective, organizational legitimacy derivesfrom the organization's success in incorporating institutional mythsinto its formal structure and activities. However, it is possible for anorganization to be faced with conflicting myths in its institutionalenvironment. 75 Such a conflict is called a legitimation conflict; itrepresents a collision between different sovereigns' conceptions oflegitimate policing. Conflicts at this level may bring into questionthe fundamental legitimacy of a police department.

The organizational response to a legitimation conflict is cere-monial: structures and policies are developed that display to sover-eigns that the organization is responding to the conflict. Thus,aspects of organizational structure, policies or procedures are devel-oped as "treaties between contending legitimations" 76 that flowfrom different sovereigns. Two areas of organizational structureand associated policy - personnel procedures and internal review- are presented as examples of treaties that derive from conflictsover personnel policy and police behavior.

74 Klockars, supra note 73, at 532-35.75 Meyer & Scott, supra note 4, at 202. Organizational attainment of legitimacy from

relevant actors in their institutional environment is called an organization's "culturaltheory." An organization's cultural theory is defined as "the extent to which the array ofestablished cultural accounts provides explanations for its existence, functioning, andjurisdiction, and lack or deny alternatives." Id. at 201. In other words, an organizationhas attained perfect cultural theory when it has unquestioned legitimacy in all areas of itsinstitutional environment.

76 Id. at 210.

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Example 1: Personnel Policies. Intradepartmental conflicts be-tween supporters of old-style police professionalism and advocatesof affirmative action personnel policies have created legitimationconflicts for police departments. Focused on the differing concep-tions of what was an appropriate personnel policy for a police de-partment, these conflicts have been resolved by treaties in the formof department structure and personnel procedures. The police pro-fessionalism movement supported civil-service type personnel pro-cedures because these procedures removed decisions over thehiring, evaluation and firing of personnel from the control of polit-ical machines. The personnel procedures advocated by the profes-sionalism reformers in support of the goal of departmentalautonomy included establishing rigorous, objective hiring criteriaand recruiting from outside the service area if necessary to satisfythe criteria.

However, during the 1970s, politically empowered minoritygroups began to challenge the legitimacy of civil-service type per-sonnel policies. These groups advocated use of personnel proce-dures that promoted balanced representation of communitydemographics in a department and affirmative action hiring strate-gies. 77 Such challenges, reflecting the political empowerment of mi-nority groups, attained the status of legitimation conflicts; inresponse, accommodating departmental structures and proceduresemerged. For example, Skolnick and Bayley discuss the way inwhich the police chief redesigned the Oakland, California, police de-partment's personnel hiring and promotional procedures in 1974 torespond to the concerns of both the Police Officer's Association andthe Black Police Officer's Association.78 Also, many police depart-ments have added affirmative action units,79 created non-sworn po-sitions8° and modified their organizational charts in attempts torespond to conflicts over personnel policies.8 1 All of these actionsrepresent treaties in which the police department ceremonially ac-

77 WALKER, supra note 31, at 314-15.78 SKOLNICK & BAYLEY, supra note 32, at 152-55.79 According to Walker, affirmative action "means that an employer must take positive

steps (hence: affirmative action) to remedy past discrimination." WALKER, supra note 31,at 315.

80 Ostrom, Parks and Whitaker define sworn police as "any individual given ex-traordinary power of arrest by virtue of statutory or other legally valid authorization."ELEANOR OSTROM ET AL., PATTERNS OF METROPOLITAN POLICING 331 (1978). Non-swornpolice positions are those that do not include the authority to arrest.

81 Guyot, for example, describes such strategies as opening management positions tonon-sworn officers, removing middle-management positions, adding the rank of MasterPolice Officer and elaborating each rank with multiple in-rank classifications to increaseopportunities for advancement. Guyot, supra note 9, at 43, 55, 57, 59.

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knowledged important sovereigns with differing legitimating ac-counts of appropriate personnel policy.

Example 2: Control Over Police Behavior. Internal review boards (ascontrasted with external review boards) represent another exampleof how organizational structure represents a treaty among the con-tending legitimations that flow from powerful sovereigns. In thiscase, the sovereigns are the police department itself, the policeunion and labor representatives, and mobilized public opinion.Complex and highly ritualized internal review procedures haveemerged to provide a ceremonial organizational response to publicconcerns over the ability of the police to police themselves. Suchformal assessments of officers' behavior may even be mandatory insome situations, such as when a police officer fires a weapon in theline of duty. Moreover, the internal review procedures are oftencomplex and time-consuming. Yet, despite this organizational elab-oration of procedures in internal review, the penalties resultingfrom internal review are typically mild and infrequently imposed.8 2

Rather than being seen as an effective control over police behavior,the internal review process may be better described as a ceremonialritual whose purpose is to act as a treaty among contending legiti-mations of police behavior. Thus, the function of an internal reviewboard is not only to avoid the bitter divisiveness and disruption thatan external review board (with its civilian members) creates amongpolice executives, public officials and line officers, but also to helpprotect against the public degradation of the police department.8 3

As suggested above, organizations adapt in order to accommo-date challenges to their legitimacy. There are also occasions, how-ever, when organizational legitimacy is simply lost.

B. LEGITIMACY LOST AND REGAINED

In many ways, police organizations resemble what Meyer andZucker describe as permanently failing organizations: they appear tocareen from crisis to crisis; and by virtually any external criteria of

82 Warren Christopher & The Independent Commission in the Los Angeles PoliceDepartment, REPORT OF THE INDEPENDENT COMMISSION ON THE Los ANGELES POLICEDEPARTMENT 153-79 (1991).

83 For a discussion of conflicts among the public and the police that emerged whenthree cities attempted to put into place boards with the power of civilian review over thepolice, see Stephen C. Halpern, Police Employee Organizations and Accountability Procedures inThree Cities, 8 LAW & Soc. REV. 561 (1974). To describe organizational structure or activ-ity as ceremonial is not to negate the value or importance of that structure or activity.Because police organizations operate in a highly institutionalized environment, theirsuccess is contingent on ceremonial recognition of institutionalized values.

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efficiency, they do not perform well. 84 Yet, only rarely do policedepartments fail to survive, in the sense of actually being abandonedby their communities. 85

Nevertheless, police departments can lose legitimacy. In the in-stitutional model, the loss of legitimacy is itself a ceremonial pro-cess, marked by rituals of moral degradation, and removal andreplacement of the police chief executive in order to regain institu-tional legitimacy. The moral degradation of a police departmentand the firing of its police chief is inevitably a highly ceremonialevent staged in a public arena, even though the incident that pro-voked the degradation and removal may be something over whichthe chief had little or no control. A precipitating incident might beany of a number of different occurrences, such as a line officer whoused too much coercion in a street encounter, departmental corrup-tion uncovered by the press, the mayor's dissatisfaction with theproduction of arrests or newly elected leadership with a mandate to"get tough on crime. '

"86

All of these circumstances may provide occasions for the cere-mony of public degradation and removal of a police chief, eventhough it is often unclear whether the chief actually could have pre-vented the events that precipitated the legitimation crisis. Regard-less, as a result of the precipitating events, the police departmentfaces a non-resolvable legitimation crisis and consequently suffers aloss of legitimacy in the eyes of its sovereigns. Then the catharticritual of departmental degradation, removal of a police chief andreplacement with a new chief takes place. The ritual is a ceremonial

84 The idea of permanently failing organizations is developed by M. Meyer andZucker. The essence of their position is that particular organizations survive, in spite of atrack record of questionable success in terms of technical criteria of efficiency and effec-tiveness, because of their ability to respond to the expectations of their institutionalenvironment. MARSHALL W. MEYER & LYNNE ZUCKER, PERMANENTLY FAILING ORGANIZA-TIONS (1989).

85 The 1970s witnessed a dramatic increase in the number of municipal governmentswhich replaced traditionally separate police and fire agencies with consolidated agen-cies. These agencies, called Public Safety Departments, consisted of line personnel whowere cross-trained in both law enforcement and fire suppression. Often implementedfor reasons of efficiency and economy, these agencies confronted broad-based legiti-macy challenges, and many subsequently have been abandoned in favor of traditionallyseparate police and fire organizations in the delivery of both police and fire services.Assessments of this phenomenon are discussed in John P. Crank & Diane Alexander,Opposition to Public Safety: An Assessment of Issues Confronting Public Safety Directors, 17J. POL.Sci. & ADMIN. 55 (1989); Charles Coe & Joel Rosch, Benefits and Barriers to Police-FireConsolidation, 15J. POL. Sci. & ADMIN. 216 (1987).

86 Robert M. Regoli et al., Career Stage and Cynicism for a National Sample of Police

Chiefs, Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the Academy of Criminal Justice Sci-ences (1989).

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act designed to re-establish the legitimacy of the police departmentto the dissatisfied sovereigns. The installation of a replacementchief (the symbolic head of the department) with a new (legitimat-ing) mandate can appease the alienated sovereigns, who are dissatis-fied with the current legitimating account of the department.

An example of such a legitimation crisis involves the recentcontroversy over an incident involving the Los Angeles Police De-partment. On March 3, 1991, several Los Angeles police officerswere videotaped beating a black motorist. Subsequent national me-dia exposure of the videotape invoked responses from the full pano-ply of sovereigns in the institutional environment of the LosAngeles Police Department. The focus of attention for this incidentrapidly shifted from the officers, four of whom faced criminalcharges, to Chief of Police Daryl F. Gates. Calls for the removal ofChief Gates came from institutional sovereigns such as the mayor,members of the City Council, representatives of the business com-munity and the California Chapter of the American Civil LibertiesUnion.8 7 The media, providing repeated national showings of thevideotape, was an agent for the mobilization of public opinionagainst Chief Gates. Within the department, however, Gates gath-ered support from important police representatives.88 Moreover,his position was protected by Civil Service and provided him withvirtually unlimited tenure.

The depth of the legitimation conflict proved too great forGates to withstand. In the wake of the controversy, Chief Gates andMayor Bradley jointly selected a panel of experts, called the Christo-pher Commission,8 9 headed by former Deputy Secretary of StateWarren Christopher. The published findings of the commissionrecommended that Chief Gates retire from office and announce histentative retirement if a satisfactory successor has not been chosenby then. On April 16, 1992, the Los Angeles Times announced thatPhiladelphia Police Commissioner Willie L. Williams would succeed"embattled" Chief Gates as the department's top official.90 On thesame day the announcement was made, Gates' degradation contin-ued: in a closed and contentious meeting with the powerful Los An-geles City Council, Chief Gates was questioned regarding a series of

87 Hector Tobar, Gates Offers Plan to Revive Confidence in the LAPD, L.A. TIMES, March28, 1991, at Al; Glenn F. Bunting, Woo Says Gates Should Quit or Be Fired, L.A.TIMES,March 28, 1991, at B1.

88 Jesse Katz, Gates Should Stay, Hahn Says, L.A. TIMES, March 31, 1991, at B5.89 See supra note 84.90 David Ferrell &Josh Meyer, Officers Are Divided on Department's New Boss, L.A. TIMES,

April 16, 1992, at Al.

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lawsuits over alleged police misbehavior. 9 1

Gates announced his retirement at the end of June 1992. Withhis replacement, the ritual of public degradation, removal and re-placement will conclude; Willie Williams will assume stewardship ofthe department, and do so with a new (legitimating) mandate. Partof his legitimating mandate is revealed in his reputation as a strongchief who is tough on police abuse, and part lies in who he is - anoutsider, the first to head the department in forty years. 92 Thus,with the hiring of Williams, the cathartic cycle of legitimation lostand ceremonially regained is completed, and legitimacy lost will berestored.

V. CONCLUSIONS

Why do police departments persist in American municipalities?It is not because they produce some clearly defined, measurable andhighly marketable output. Indeed, there is little consensus on pre-cisely what it is that police departments should be doing. Neverthe-less, police departments have proven to be remarkably stableinstitutions. They are perceived as so endemic to city life that theelimination of a municipal police department is, for most people,unthinkable. Their persistence has occurred because they embodybroad institutional values and are thus recognized as a part of thenatural order of things. As such, their organizational right to exist isbeyond question. They are institutionalized organizations.

In this article, we have endeavored to demonstrate some of theways in which an institutional perspective may provide insight intothe activities and organization of American municipal police depart-ments. We suggest that police organizations do not achieve legiti-macy through their ability to participate in a technical environment;rather, they are institutionalized organizations that "turn [their]back on a technical core in order to concentrate on conforming to[their] institutional environment.- 93 Using numerous examples, wehave suggested ways in which police organizations conform to theirinstitutional environment. Through ceremonial displays of legiti-macy, that is, by incorporating into their organizational structure ordisplaying in formalized activities broad institutional myths, policeorganizations are able to survive, regardless of the organization's

91 Id.

92 Id.

93 John W. Meyer et al., Institutional and Technical Sources of Organizational Structure. Ex-plaining the Structure of Educational Organizations, in ORGANIZATION AND THE HUMAN SERV-ICES 151, 153 (H. Stein ed., 1981).

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ability to produce a clearly defined or economically marketableproduct.

This article has presented a picture of a police department thatis so interpenetrated by elements of its institutional environmentthat the idea of formal boundaries separating the department fromits institutional environment is itself problematic. If, as Meyer andRowan suggest, both organizations and their institutional environ-ments "reflect socially constructed reality,"9 4 then a clear notion ofa bounded police department, somehow distinct from but linkedthrough boundary-maintenance mechanisms to its environment,cannot be sustained.

The institutional perspective is not simply a constraint theory oforganizational structure and activity; it is also an enabling theory ofstructure and activity. That is, the structure and activity of policeorganizations are not simply constrained by variable features intheir environment. Rather, they are both constrained and enabledby their institutional environment, or as Meyer and Rowan suggest,by realizations of their institutional environments. 95

By acknowledging the contribution of the wider institutionalenvironment to both constrain and enable variation in a police de-partment's organization and activities, we have opened a Pandora'sBox of analytic complexity:

Organizations are affected by the structure of relations of the interor-ganizational systems in which they are embedded, and these systemsare in turn affected by the societal systems in which they are located,and these systems are affected by the world system in which they arelocated. All of these systems are evolving over time, and each is com-prised of elements created at differing points of time.96

Thus, institutional perspectives of organizations that have thecapacity to become complex leave one with the tautological conclu-sion that everything causes everything else. Nevertheless, the ideathat police are responsible for the efficient and effective productionof technical outputs, such as arrests, should be abandoned. As areplacement, the institutional perspective suggests that a police de-partment's activities in response to crime are determined, not interms of the effective crime prevention or crime fighting, but ratherin response to crime as it is perceived by sovereigns in its institu-tional environment.

For example, the mythical importance that index crimes97 have

94 Meyer & Rowan, supra note 2, at 346.95 Id.96 Scott & Meyer, supra note 16, at 174.97 Manning, supra note 15, at 20. Index crimes are a classification used to indicate

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achieved in comparison to other categories of crime can be traced tothe construction of those crime categories by August Vollmer and,by implication, to the institutional myth-building process called in-stitutional-organizational reactivity.98 In other words, what are re-ferred to as index crimes are more clearly institutional rather thantechnical constructs, and the importance that the police and thepublic (who receive information on index crimes from the police)place on these specific categories of crime can be attributed to theirmythical potency in the institutional environment of policing.

The institutional perspective presented in this article suggeststhat there are values, beliefs and norms in the institutional environ-ment of policing that are embodied in powerful myths that organiza-tions ceremonially incorporate into structure and activity. At thesame time, this article has endeavored to describe an institutionalenvironment of policing that is not simply static, but is also remarka-bly fluid. As such, this article has presented an institutional per-spective in terms of broad social processes that contain changedynamics as well as elements of stasis. Change dynamics in this arti-cle are described primarily in terms of powerful actors or organiza-tions representing the police that are capable of reacting back ontoand modifying their institutional environment. From this, four ar-eas of future research are suggested.

First, detailed case studies may provide further insight into therelationship between particular organizations and institutional fea-tures of their environment. This would provide a clarification of theinfluence of specific institutional sovereigns over particular organi-zations, and the way in which the influence of these sovereigns isceremonially acknowledged by particular organizations.

Second, we have proceeded on the premise that police organi-zations are so highly institutionalized that issues of efficiency andeffectiveness in the production of technical outputs are virtually ir-relevant to their organizational well-being. However, we believethat future research should not view police organization and behav-ior only in terms of its wider institutional environment. There is atechnical core to police work, and research should assess the inter-play among technical and institutional dynamics in the productionof police structure and activity.

Third, the institutional environment of police organizations hasbeen taken as a given: where changes in the institutional environ-

eight types of legally serious crime and are collected by the FBI by state reportingdistricts.

98 See supra part III.B.3.

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ment are discussed, they appear to be to be described as minor per-turbations within a powerful and pervasive institutionalenvironment. Yet, an examination of the history of policing sug-gests that this may not be the case. Municipal police organizationsare of relatively recent origin in the United States. It was not until1854, for example, that Philadelphia abandoned theirnightwatchman system and put in place a full-time police depart-ment.99 An implication and suggestion for future research is thatthe institutional environment of police organizations may be, overtime, capable of dramatic transformation, and institutional analysesshould attend to broad changes that may occur in that environment.

A final area of suggested inquiry is that of institutional isomor-phism. Institutional theorists suggest that contemporary forces inAmerican society are contributing to a dramatic isomorphism in or-ganizations that participate in the same institutional sector.100 Yet,observers of the police remark on the dramatic changes in the or-ganization and behavior of contemporary policing. 101 Efforts to rec-oncile these opposing perspectives may both provide insight intothe police and contribute to the understanding of institutionalprocesses.

99 MICHAEL FELDBERG, THE TURBULENT ERA: RIOT AND DISORDER IN JACKSONIAN

AMERICA 114 (1980).100 DiMaggio and Powell suggest that there is a "startling homogeneity of organiza-

tional forms and practices" within organizational fields, and describe broad contempo-rary mechanisms of institutional isomorphic change. DiMaggio & Powell, supra note 12,at 148.

101 Skolnick and Bayley identify four areas of contemporary change in police organi-zational structure and activity: police-community reciprocity, civilianization, reorienta-tion of patrol, and areal decentralization of command. Kenneth Newman has describedcontemporary change as a "sea-change" that is roughly described by the rubric "mobili-zation of the citizenry for its own defense." Skolnick & Bayley, supra note 32, at 210-20;Debating the Evolution of American Policing, in PERSPECrIvEs OF POLICING # 5 232 (FrancisX. Hartman ed., 1988).

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